Missing
by McGonagall's Bola
Summary: One phone call from Ellie late on a Friday night is enough for Jo's maternal instinct to kick in. Fear doesn't begin to describe her reaction; irrational panic may not be too far off...
1. Chapter 1

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Chapter 1

Jo smiled upon gazing at Lindsay supporting her growing tummy while leaning in slightly to eye a very small scrap of evidence through the microscope –– a bit of evidence which Sid had noticed upon their victim a tad earlier that evening. Lindsay had determined it was a shred of red fabric, which might have gotten ripped off of the killer's clothing. "You're really beginning to show," Jo commented, watching Lindsay pull away from the magnifier, before smiling down upon her tummy.

"I know, right?" she replied. "I was way further along with Lucy when that happened last time! I can't believe it!" With that, she patted her tummy proudly and looked at the scrap of red fabric once more, to see if there were particles of any sort on it that could help them further with finding more details about either victim or offender and what had happened between them. Sid already had stated that the victim couldn't have managed to give herself those injuries, no matter the circumstances.

Jo smiled weakly, remembering how incredibly proud she herself had been, when she had been with Tyler. She remembered the mornings when upon getting dressed, she turned this way and that before the mirror to look down on her expanding belly. A sigh eschewed from between her lips as the memories flooded her mind, the amazing realization that that time had been over twenty years prior already. Jo fleetingly wondered whether she would have had more children of her own now, had she and Russ not had issues then. She wondered if she still would have opted to adopt Ellie.

She felt her phone buzz in her pocket before the ringtone resounded quite loudly through the lab. Lindsay didn't respond –– after all, how often did it happen someone got a call while at the lab, either personal or related to the case, one of more relevance than another? Jo's attention shifted from the victim's jeans to reaching her mobile phone, buzzing and ringing rather wildly in her pocket. _Thinking about kids now… _she thought. An uncomfortable feeling raced through her body seeing her adopted daughter's name upon the screen, though. Ellie was having a sleepover with a girl from her soccer team, this Friday night, and she had never once called during sleepovers. Immediately, fear gripped the mother in her –– fear that maybe something had happened. Jo would have imagined the girls to be watching a chick flick with a bowl of hot popcorn right about now, while she was working late –– anything that didn't require a call to her. Accepting the phone call and holding the phone beside her ear did nothing in fact to lessen the fear that she felt rising within herself. If anything, what she heard when she accepted the call only alarmed her more.

"Mom?" Jo heard, Ellie's voice barely resounding over the music and other noise. It sounded as if she was at a club or such –– definitely somewhere, she could tell from the mere sound of it, that was not suitable for her mature but still teenaged daughter. She held the phone a little further as the noise intensified and she clearly heard someone call 'Mommy's girl!' close by, as if meant for Ellie.

"Ellie, honey?" Jo called, and the sound of her voice caused Lindsay to abandon the microscope, whereas the sound of the phone hadn't. When her adopted daughter didn't answer her, Jo's mind and gaze filled with a sudden, unabashed determination, anger and intense worry. She wasted no time, and walked from the Trace lab in the direction of the AV lab, not even bothering to take off her gloves or lab coat at all. She hurried down the hall to where she knew she would find Adam, hoping against hope that Ellie would stay on the line, if anything… so that he could locate her. Meanwhile, she tried to keep in touch with her daughter. "Ellie, where are you? Where are you calling from now?" she asked, not getting any response at all. "Trace!" she demanded, eyeing Adam, and turning the speaker function on, before handing it over to him.

Seeing the look in the mother's hazel eyes, Adam did as told without any questions at all. The look in her eyes and the fear it elicited was scarier than any consequences that could possibly follow her request. He set to work, getting the devices running and hoping that he could give her an address at least.

"Ellie, please talk to me!" Jo demanded, sensing something amiss on the other end, mind running, heart racing. Then the call ended and Jo's eyes flashed from her cell to the screen of Adam's computer. Ellie never would have ended the call that way, Jo knew. She imprinted the address on the screen into her mind and snatched away her phone once more, hurriedly running off to the end of the hallway, slamming her palm against the elevator button.

If Adam had thought that she looked scary when she demanded he trace the phone call, then he definitely had no words at all for the look upon her face just before she took off. He had a good idea as to where Jo was headed… but he had no idea at all what to do, nor how to react to it. Should he have let her go to begin with? Should he contact Mac? Then he saw that was not necessary anymore, because even less than a minute after Jo had raced from his lab, Mac was following her down the hallway in a seeming hurry. Even Adam was convinced that could not be a coincidence. Maybe he had seen her run down the hall, thought it unsafe to let her go wherever she seemed to be headed very fast. The address didn't ring a bell with him, so Adam's innate curiosity and worry lead him to search further until he could see it visualized on the screen. "Seven Oaks" it said, and it really appeared to be a club –– and while its name alone didn't say much of the sort, the bright neon lights on the walls definitely did.

_Oh dear_, he thought. If only he were Ellie's mom (or dad), then he surely would be concerned right now, especially given the fact that she had suddenly ended the phone call ––or someone else had done so in Ellie's stead. After some years of working at the police department, you definitely began to see something suspicious in almost everything you ever came across. Adam Ross had seen too much not to; but then Jo had seen more still…

"Jo! What's the matter?" Adam heard Mac's voice carry over across the lab's main hallway, once he had reached her at the elevators.

"Ellie's in trouble."

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	2. Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

It had been quite a coincidence that he had seen her run through the hallways in the direction of AV. His interest had definitely been perked and a frown had settled solidly between Mac's eyebrows as he pondered for a brief moment whether to ask her about the situation later or go after her now and see what was going on. She had seemed upset, if her running through the hallways was any indication at all, and if he hadn't been mistaken, he had caught her holding her phone beside her ear. The sheer combination of these little details definitely caused him to get upright and decide to follow his guts and go after her, at once. Maybe he could help.

He had quite nearly reached AV, when she had flown off from there, nearly running Mac over, heading in the direction of the elevators, cursing under her breath. The look of growing determination in her eyes which he had quickly caught, had… unsettled him, to say the least… He had decided in a split second this time and gone after her, rather grateful she needed to wait for an elevator since it had given him the chance to reach her and convince her to have him drive, that he would get them over there ASAP if she gave him the address. He had not thought that it was a very great idea to let her drive in that state.

She had continuously been tapping her foot against the floor of Mac's car, clutching the hand rest tightly the whole way so that her knuckles turned white, not having said one word since they had entered the car. She had gazed at the houses and trees passing them by in the early night, sunken in thoughts he had no idea about. After all, she had not told him why she wanted to go to the address she had given him, nor what Ellie had to do with it. He hadn't asked her, concentrating on the road ahead, trying to get her to the address, as quickly as possible, as he had said he would do.

He hadn't expected her to speak to him, when her voice had suddenly sounded, barely audible, the words spilling from Jo's mouth, all at once. "She called me from somewhere rather noisy, and she sounded distressed, but I never got the chance to really ask her what was going on, because the conversation got interrupted before she could say anything more concrete."

Unable to think of anything he could say to reassure her, he had confirmed that they were almost there. Mac had barely stopped the vehicle before Jo had left it and all but run inside. Brow quirked, he had parked and run after her. "If you see Ellie somewhere…" she had said when she had felt him join her –– felt, because she hadn't looked over at him. Mac had definitely been slightly shocked upon hearing this, because it meant that Jo had a good reason to believe Ellie was there. He had caught the name 'Seven Oaks' before entering, something that reminded him of a dirty old pub. However, it was definitely all but. The name hadn't hinted at exactly what he had seen upon setting foot inside: a club. People, especially women, had been dancing about, some of them on tables, in revealing clothes and in unsubtle ways, under flashing neon lights and to loud, up-beat music. From the mere look of them, Mac had assumed a very select few would not be intoxicated.

He had seen the fury in Jo's eyes when they entered the club, and he had a good idea why. Teenagers of fourteen or fifteen years old, just like Ellie, were there, downing alcohol. "Ellie's in here… somewhere," Jo had said. Neither of them had seen her face among the many youths. Then again, it had been like finding a needle in a haystack…

However, even once everything was entirely cleared, it made little difference. They had ended the party right then and there, hoping that it would allow Jo to find Ellie… but it hadn't, giving her the feeling her daughter wasn't there anymore, even if she should have been at the time she had phoned her mother. Jo had tried to call back, had tried Tyler's and even Russ's numbers, all without any results: Ellie seemed nowhere to be found.

Her hands in her hair, Jo was walking back and forth. She had called the parents of the girl Ellie was having a sleepover with, but all Julie's mom had contributed was that her daughter and Ellie had wanted to go to the movies, and that Julie would call when they wanted her to pick them up in town. She hadn't really seemed all that worried, given they had said that the movie would end only at 11.30PM. That was at least until Jo had mentioned the situation: Ellie's call and Jo and Mac immediately having gone to Seven Oaks without finding Ellie or their own daughter.

Flack and some other police officers had arrived at the scene in the meantime as well, when they disrupted the party, to help them look as the partygoers left the building and to check about neighborhood… but all without result again. Jo Danville felt restless to say the least. Time had ticked by as they did this, more time during which Jo had tried to reach her daughter again, yet… had heard nothing from her. The longer since the phone call and since she had heard Ellie's voice, the more worried she naturally became.

Ellie hadn't sounded like her usual herself, and she wouldn't have called to begin with if she hadn't been in trouble or really scared. Jo didn't know what to do. She thought she had done everything she could, and she didn't even have words for how it all made her feel. She felt nauseous and stuck in an adrenaline rush. She wanted her baby girl to be okay… but she had no idea where she even was. She felt like a failure of a mom.

"Jo?"

The first-grade detective looked wearily at Don Flack, hoping he had found her but seeing from the look in his eyes he hadn't. "Do you reckon she could have gone home?"

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	3. Chapter 3

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Chapter 3  


When Mac had offered to take Jo home to see if Ellie maybe had gone there, Flack had promised he would continue checking the neighborhood of Seven Oaks with some other police officers. However, Ellie hadn't been at home either. Jo had wanted to leave immediately after confirming that she wasn't, but Mac had suggested Ellie might still return home later, and said that it would be much better if someone were there when she arrived –– well, if she arrived rather. Jo wasn't entirely comfortable sitting there, just waiting, without actively doing something, even though she knew Mac had a point in what he had said. Time was ticking by, seemingly both slowly and yet very fast as well. It went impossibly slow, as they had gotten few results, but it went very fast as well because more time without finding Ellie ticked by and by. Even though her profession and past had left her with scars, Jo Danville couldn't rightly remember a more frightening moment in her entire life. She felt utterly useless, too.

"I'm just wasting my time, Mac!" she said, slightly raising her gaze, eyes both teary and filled with undetermined emotions. "I should be on the streets with the others, looking for her instead of sitting here waiting! God knows where she is and who she's with, and you know time is incredibly crucial!"

"Where would you go look, Jo?" Mac said calmly, trying to reason with her. He knew nothing he could possibly suggest would really calm Jo down, but letting his own growing worry about Ellie show to her would certainly not be beneficial. Jo sighed in exasperation instead of answering his question with words –– thinking reasonably wasn't possible. Mac couldn't rightly blame her for that. Then, a knock to the door sounded, and Mac could see her heart leap in hope as she hurried to the door.

"Tyler!" Jo never thought there would ever be any single moment that she would be unhappy to see her son and his sweetheart. She was quite relieved, of course, to know that he was there to support her through this, that he was seemingly just as worried about his sister as she was. However, she had hoped for Ellie to just come home… As such, the brief few seconds in which Jo's motherly worry had diminished to a minimum, shot right back into place. With that, however, an idea somehow struck her as well. "Tyler, do you reckon you and Alex could stay here while Mac and I go back into town to look for her with the others? It would be best if there was someone here in case she shows up and I'm going nuts, inside these four walls."

At this, Tyler nodded. "Sure," he said. "We'll stay here. Please keep us posted, though, you know, if you find her."

Jo gave him a tight smile, but the seriousness of the situation resulted in it not being sincere. She leaned up on her toes to kiss her son's cheek gratefully, turning to Mac, who had gotten to his feet and then moved slowly over to the door already, well aware he wouldn't really manage to reason with her anyway.

As they passed through the door, Jo glanced at Mac fleetingly. "You don't have to come with me if you don't want to, Mac," she said. "You can just drop me off at the lab and I'll take my own car from there. You most likely want to go back to Christine, which is absolutely understandable, since you already don't have lots of time together. I do appreciate your efforts, but I can drive myself as well. Please don't feel like you have to be here."

"I already texted Christine to cancel our dinner plans," Mac said as Jo and he descended the concrete stairs together. "I told her Ellie is missing and that I'll come home when we've got her. She understood, so don't worry about me or Christine or anything –– I'm here because I want to be."

Jo Danville nodded curtly. "Maybe we should try the movie theatre to begin with," she tried. "Maybe Ellie and Julie went back there. That's the best I can suggest right now."

Mac nodded vaguely, taking the driver's seat, Jo sliding in beside him in. She had only just clicked her safety belt closed when she felt the engine rev to life and the car leaving the curb and rolling down the streets. She gripped the hand rest tightly, the great, deafening silence hanging in the car doing nothing at all to assuage her nerves as she thought about Ellie. She tried to take in a deep, slow breath and found herself relaxing ever so slightly as the smell of Mac's aftershave filled her nostrils. Despite the situation, Jo couldn't help tumbling head-first into the soothing respite it provided her. The detective's overactive mind clung onto that smell, looking for anything else to focus on, other than the panic and fear that had gripped her since Ellie's phone call. Maybe it was a coping mechanism of sorts to stop her from losing her mind, the diversion she needed to put _some_ distance between her and her emotions and stay as rational as possible. It wouldn't be the first time Jo had let her mind wander about him either; it was something it churned over in calmer moments, too, and now that Christine had been mentioned as well…

It had been an impetuous, rather stupid idea of hers and Lindsay, but regardless, it had soon lead to Mac and Christine meeting to begin with, to them becoming closer and eventually a couple. Truth be told, she hadn't dared to expect there to ever have come forth something so serious from it all, and she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it either. She was happy that he was happy –– he definitely seemed to be much more so now than he had been before.

There was a slight gnawing feeling there as well every time he spoke of Christine and every time she was confronted with the two of them together, though. She wasn't sure how to word it; maybe it was a form of sadness or regret. She liked Mac Taylor, and he fit in perfectly with the type of men Jo had always hopelessly fallen for. She sort of liked stubbornness, as long as it didn't become irrational, and courage and honesty, as he always showed. She adored him as a colleague and she was quite sure she could love him as more than that as well, but now there was Christine and his… _hostility_, for lack of a better fitting term, whenever she seemed to steer conversations to a more personal level, whether intended or not. It did seem that while Christine and he grew closer still, she and Mac only grew further apart… and that was definitely something she regretted. She had pondered it so often already, but she wouldn't react otherwise, should she be thrown into that same, hopeless situation. A situation where she saw him suffering and had a good idea what from, yet felt Mac not trusting her with it at all, felt him turn only further into himself rather than confide in someone …

Jo's thoughts came to a halt as the sound of her ringtone resounded loudly through the car. Turning his gaze aside, curious himself whether it could be related to Ellie's disappearance, Mac watched as she extracted her cell phone from her jeans pocket and took the call. He listened intently at the words she was saying, but got very little. So Mac waited until she ended the call and turned to him, pale.

"That was Julie's mom," Jo whispered, vaguely noticing the look of wonder on Mac's face. She shakily raised her hand to her open mouth and suppressed a sob from fear and utter agony. "Julie just arrived home distraught, but without Ellie. Oh, my God, Mac, where is my little girl?"

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	4. Chapter 4

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Chapter 4  


It was definitely difficult, very difficult, for Jo Danville to be sitting at that kitchen table, giving the crying girl the time and space she needed to calm herself and tell her story at her own pace –– just like her education at the police academy, her knowledge in psychology, her years of training at the FBI and her time with the CSI team had taught her to do. A powerful whirlwind of emotions was racing through Jo's entire body as she sat there, worry and the great need to know, to get some answers, making it really hard to remain professional. Time was indeed crucial, she knew, and that didn't help her fight the battle she felt raging inside –– at all.

Suddenly, she felt Mac's hands upon her shoulders for moral support and heard her colleague's voice overreach Julie's gentle crying, and she fully appreciated the meaningfulness of him being there with her. "What happened before you realized you had lost track of Ellie, Julie?" he asked her gently, quite soothingly. Mac's tone virtually _invited_ her to reply –– ideal for Julie's age and current level of distress.

"This is all my f-fault," the teenaged girl managed through sobs, "I suggested we take the bus and go to Seven Oaks instead of go watch the movie. I had heard from some o-older g-girls at school that the bouncers don't check your ID most of the time. E-Ellie wasn't really inclined to go, but I c-convinced her, said that w-we would be back in time for when the movie was supposed to e-end."

Jo knew that there were many bars like that in New York, where the bouncers barely cared whether the customers were actually minors or not. She had been scared of this of course, when Ellie had begun to go to parties a few years ago, but all those years of nothing serious ever having happened, had served to reassure her, toning down her motherly worrying a tad. She had reached a point where she had never thought about Ellie being one of those girls who let herself be convinced to go to one of those clubs, knowing it wasn't legal. Right then, she felt Mac squeeze her shoulder gently… and while it didn't reassure her, she was still glad that he was there.

"Do you know what happened before Ellie called her mom?" Mac asked again, wording it like this in hopes that Julie would say something with a tad more relevance in response to it.

Julie nodded, swallowing audibly. "There was t-this guy, I don't know how old he was, but he seemed to be about Tyler's age, and he was sort of trying to h-hit on her, dancing close and wanting to buy her a tequila and all, but Ellie said she wasn't interested and turned her back on him, but he wouldn't listen and called a few of his b-buddies over, who all began to dance w-with us… I– She said she was gonna call her mom to come get her at the club, because she didn't like it there anymore. I t-thought she was being silly and was ruining everything, and then I lost track of her. I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find her –– she was suddenly gone."

"When did you notice that she was gone?" Jo asked, her voice sounding very strangled.

"I'm not sure…" Julie whispered, obviously suppressing another flood of salty tears.

"How much time would you say passed, from when you last saw Ellie to when you began looking for her?" Mac asked in the same quiet tone, rewording it again in hopes of clarifying it for her and making it easier for her to answer and give them something more concrete to work with, so they could try and find Ellie.

"I'm not sure," Julie said, "I didn't really look at the time, but I began looking at about 11.10PM or so and realized that s-she wasn't there anymore."

Jo sighed exasperatedly –– Ellie's call had come in half an hour before that time (after all, it had been quite a drive there), and a lot could have happened in that time frame. She felt Mac's hand tighten on her shoulder once again, and now it wasn't reassuring anymore at all. In fact, Jo thought the touch felt annoying now. It didn't tell her where her daughter was. It didn't ease her maddening worry. So, quite annoyed, she shrugged his hand off, opening her mouth to ask Julie if she could even hazard a guess as to where Ellie was, just when her musical ringtone sounded through the kitchen.

Silence ruled, aside from her ringtone and Julie's abating sobs. She reached for her cell in her jeans pocket rather awkwardly, accepting the call without looking at the unknown number, never quite looking at anyone, or anything, just keeping her gaze cast down. She felt as if she were being watched by everyone there, felt everyone's eyes burning into her as she listened.

Mac Taylor watched his colleague's face carefully. He watched the strange array of emotions flash across it intently. A combination of initial relief and a new sort of deep worry –– one he hadn't witnessed yet tonight before then –– made room for what appeared to be shock as tears sprung to Jo's hazel eyes. He had rarely seen the woman cry, and the sight of it in that very moment unsettled him to say the least. Her answers to whomever was on the other end of the line mainly consisted of murmurs of confirmation and short one or two worded questions such as "When?" and "How much?". She ended the phone call with more words than she had spoken in the whole of the phone call together. "Okay. Mercy Hospital, you say? Okay. I'll be there in a few."

As she hung up, Jo turned to Mac slowly. Her lower lip wobbled slightly and both her cheeks looked blotchy as if she was just about to burst into tears… and was holding back with every last bit of her strength and willpower. "Ellie has been brought into Mercy Hospital," she whispered, her voice matching her pallor.

Mac Taylor nodded once, very curtly. "I'll drive you," he said.

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	5. Chapter 5

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Chapter 5  


"I thought that you would be here when you didn't answer your cell phone."

Jo averted her gaze from her adopted daughter, turning her attention to the door and the man to whom the low rumbling voice belonged. "I'm sorry. I have turned it on vibrate and didn't realize you had tried to call me." She hadn't heard the door open or close, hadn't heard his footsteps even though she usually recognized them everywhere. She gave him a weak, unconvincing smile and knew it hadn't worked by the look on his face alone. Sometimes, she knew he could read her just as well as she could read him, and she surely treasured those moments. This was indeed especially true now, after their set-back following Mac's shooting and his obvious wish not to include her in whatever he was or had been going through, in any which way whatsoever.

"You haven't had any food or sleep, I reckon," he surmised, quietly offering her a cup of steaming coffee. He then turned to Tyler and Alex, sitting curled in two old chairs in the far right corner of the hospital room. "Sorry I didn't get you two something to eat or… I didn't know that you would still be here as well," he apologized.

"No worries," Tyler replied, slightly shaking his head to confirm that it really wasn't an issue. "I could bear to stretch my legs, though. Now that you're here, maybe we could get a small snack in the cafeteria." At that, he stood, Alex following him, and made for the door, giving Mac a look, full of hidden and, yet, not-so-hidden meaning.

Mac understood him nonetheless. He eyed the young man back meaningfully as well, watching them leave slowly, waiting until the white door had fallen shut before stepping to the other end of the bed and leaning back against the windowpane, looking upon the two females left in the room. "Has she woken yet?" Mac asked, inclining his head slightly to the girl lying in the bed.

"Nope," Jo whispered, lovingly returning her gaze to her daughter, stroking the top of her left hand gently with her thumb. "She mumbled a bit in her sleep earlier, but nothing very understandable. Actually, I'm sort of scared for when she does wake –– I don't know what to say or do, and that is a foreign feeling that I'm not rightly comfortable with right now or ever."

Mac watched as she swallowed hard, knew she was in a state where she had little control left over her self-doubt and the rest of her emotions. He knew that she was incredibly good at hiding how she really felt if she wanted, though. As such, Mac Taylor wasn't certain he wanted to know just how it felt to have the huge emotional thunderstorm she must be feeling raging inside himself at that point. He had no idea how he would have behaved in her situation, but he doubted he would have been much more self-controlled than she, if not even worse. "You have no fault in this, Jo," he whispered. "It could have been a whole lot worse as well. She's still here with you."

"I know," Jo whispered, dabbing at the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes as she thought of just how bad it could have been, "but she still had a quite considerable level of drugs in her system –– something she would never take of her own accord, I'm fairly certain."

Their gazes connected in the moment. It could have been much worse, Jo realized. Nonetheless, this was still her daughter, who had been unable to be found for hours, Mac realized. Now there seemed to be drugs in her system, too, without an answer yet as to how or why, since Ellie had been fast asleep by the time they had arrived at the hospital. Upon arrival, Ellie had been so upset, the nurses had said, that she hadn't made much sense at all in any case. A sedative had helped her calm down and then fall asleep at last.

Adam had traced back the 911 call to a cell phone number, owned by a man in his early twenties. He and his partner had apparently just left Seven Oaks to go on to another club with less noise and fewer crowds when they incidentally had come across Ellie and a man in his forties fighting physically with each other. The 'good samaritan' had saved Ellie from the clutches of the older man and immediately called for an ambulance, since the girl seemed in quite a state and he thought that was the best option at the time. The older guy had entered a bar right across the street when he saw that he wasn't going to get anywhere with the young girl. The couple had been questioned and from the information they had given the police officers, they had soon managed to get a hold of the guy despite the multiple channels they had had to go through to find him.

Mac had called Jo right after the questioning to inform her of how far along in the case they were. He had tried calling her when they had apprehended the perpetrator later, but Jo hadn't picked up and he had, in hindsight, decided it was better to tell her the rest of the story face-to-face anyway. "Flack went to question the bartender at the bar the guy apparently went to after the couple interceded… Luck would have it that he had to call a cab for him later in the night, so we got to know where he lived through the cab company and went there. The couple's descriptions and the evidence we discovered while processing the scene definitely match with him."

Even though relief fleetingly crossed Jo's features, it didn't shine through in her words when she spoke. She sighed. "No doubt he won't just go and get away with it, though," Jo whispered, "You know as well as I do that they rarely charge in court for cases of assault like these, unless it is as serious as rape, and there's nothing that says he was the one who drugged her, or that the one who drugged her had the intention of… All that we have is the couple's version of whatever happened –– that he was being physical with her against her apparent will –– and, if Ellie wakes and remembers anything, her own telling of the events as well. It won't be enough." Jo could feel her stomach clench at the thought of anyone touching her daughter. She felt physically sick, emotionally drained. It had been a hard couple of hours without doubt.

"We'll still build a case, and we can catch him on a lot of stuff on the side, if necessary," Mac replied, slightly shifting his weight to his other leg. "There was quite a lot of illegal stuff in the guy's lair. Plus, his name's been mentioned in some old rape cases from the nineties, but he never got caught with evidence."

"What makes you believe that it won't be the exact same this time?"

"I just–"

"Mom?"

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	6. Chapter 6

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**EPILOGUE**

"She'll be scared for a good while, I bet," Jo muttered with a sigh, shaking her head slightly as if this wasn't what should have happened… and it certainly was not.

"Especially with older men, I expect," Mac added, looking at his colleague sitting right beside him in the otherwise deserted break room of the crime lab. A mug of steaming coffee stood before each of them. It had been four days since the events surrounding Ellie's going missing and being found. Jo had taken time off to be with her in the days after her release from the hospital –– today was her first day back at the lab, since Tyler and Alex had promised to keep a watchful eye over her 'little' girl, watching movies with her and keeping her company. They had been a great help for sure, but still there was a nagging little feeling inside Jo –– she wanted to be there as well. She knew that it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference and that she couldn't be there all the time either, but still.

"Yeah," Jo agreed, nodding slightly and reaching for her full mug of coffee, lifting it to her mouth to take a sip but deciding at the last moment that she would rather not take the chance of burning herself. "The only men she doesn't flinch away from are her own brother and you at the moment. I know I should encourage her to leave the house again, sooner rather than later and all, but at the exact same time I feel like I can't…"

"Isn't being a parent full of those contradictions?" Mac said with a slight smile to lighten the mood in such a way that didn't imply he thought less of it than it was.

Jo smiled back in a way that told him she understood. For a brief moment, it felt like they were back to how they used to be, with mutual and silent understanding simmering between them, nothing more or less needed. "Indeed," she said. "It really is the toughest job in the entire world without a doubt, and yet the most rewarding I have ever had as well. I would never want to go back to my life before I became a mom."

"Are you trying to hint at me adopting a child again?" Mac wondered amused, catching the shimmer in Jo's eyes as she looked at him.

"Maybe," Jo said. Honestly, she hadn't had that intention at all. However, the last few days in which Ellie had shown rather surprising trust in him during the aftermath of the incident that night she and Julie had slipped off to Seven Oaks had been eye-opening. Jo Danville had always thought of Mac Taylor as a potentially great father, even if she had seen few interactions between him and children in general. As such, it had been a nice surprise to see the interaction between him and Ellie, especially the lack of fear from Ellie's side –– it was not something she had expected immediately.

"Truth be told, until Ellie, I had always secretly been under the impression that you could never love an adopted child as much as your own. From the first moment I saw her, though, and saw the horrible situation she was going to be thrown into if I didn't adopt her, I couldn't get it over my heart to let the situation unfold as it was going to without interfering. I had thought that maybe it would feel different, as opposed to raising Tyler. That maybe I would be more careful and more afraid to tell her off on something because I would feel like she wasn't really mine deep down… but none of that was true, and I have no words for how much I love her and see her as my own ever since she became a part of my life."

Mac gave her a small smile. They continued looking at each other for a little while before Jo cast her gaze away. As she did so, she realized she wouldn't mind carrying a child again. Her age and the fact that she had two basically grown children was a reason to both do so and to not: it would leave her with another child to coddle over now that she hardly could with Tyler and Ellie, and yet it would put too much of a difference in age between them.

She was well aware that most women necessarily presumed the need of a man in order to raise children, but it was one of those ideas that made her laugh. She had done just fine alone with Ellie and mostly alone with Tyler as well. It would be nice, of course, if there was a man in her life, though, not just someone to raise children with but to love and to be loved by in return –– maybe even instead of another child.

Detective Jo Danville sighed, looking at the leaves rustling in the autumn breeze. She wasn't sure if Lindsay's expecting again had made her so incredibly broody lately, or maybe the event with Ellie or both. However, Jo Danville felt lonely sometimes, even if she hid it well. From the corners of her eyes, she noticed Mac sipping from his coffee, completely unaware of being watched. When she cast her gaze back at the leaf she had watched earlier, it rustled more heavily for a moment before letting go of the tree and fluttering down on the breeze. Somehow, it caught Jo's attention, but she wasn't sure what it meant exactly. Had she let go of something she shouldn't have or should she let go of something she hadn't yet? Maybe someone or something had let go of her and the orange colored leaf was just rubbing it right in her face that sometimes, even if you held on with all you had, letting go was all that you could possibly do.

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Author's Note: I know... I mainly wanted to focus on Jo's feelings here, though. Analyzing Ellie's experience/feelings is something which I definitely could have done, but it wasn't really my focus with "Missing". I hope you have still enjoyed this story, and maybe we'll meet again soon sometime, when I so happen to post "Jo's Bracelets" and possibly "Personal Hell" - I'm not sure yet whether the latter's suitable for posting on here. Even though the show shall not be continued anymore, I'll continue writing/reading CSI:NY fanfiction online. Chocolate for everyone who reviewed already and hasta la vista - until the next one then! X


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